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SF Leads "Green Meeting" Revolution

2007-10-02 00:00:00.0With Biodegradable Products and a Push for Zero Food Service Waste, Moscone Center Shows Industry How to Put Environment First

SAN FRANCISCO-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom today announced efforts by The Moscone Center, one of the busiest convention, trade and meetings facilities in the nation, to produce zero waste food and Beverage events and lead the industry in environmentally friendly practices,

SMG, The company that partners with the City and County of San Francisco to run the Moscone Center, said it replaced all disposable food and beverage products with biodegradable items.

"The Moscone Center has been a trailblazer in instituting green programs for many years," Mayor Newsom said, "but we've really stepped things up."

"First, we installed the largest public solar-generating project in the natioin on te roof of the Moscone Center. We have the most aggressive diversion program of any convention center in the country. Given the enormous amount of waste generated by the typical convention or large exhibitions, what the Moscone Center is doing represents a huge part of San Francisco's efforts to lead the green city revolution," Newsom said.

SMG has spent the past decade devloping a comprehensive recycling program on the exhbit hall floor and is now implemenmting a sustainable catering practices program focusing on:

•PURCHASING: Savor...Catering by SMG is purchasing products from local vendors and producers. Its bakery vendore are required to pickup empty boxes for reuse or recycling. SMG also purchases organic produce and uses hormone-free dairy, meat and poultry, whenever possible.

•DISPOSABLE WARES: Savor...Catering by SMG is launching a program using only compostable containers made of cornstarch at Moscone's food service locations as well as for major catering events.

•FOOD PRODUCT DISPOSAL: Savor...Catering by SMG donates a large portion of the Moscone's unused food to community services such as Food RUnners and Glide Momorial Church. All of Moscone's kitchen-generated food waste is separated for composting. Any kitchen-generated waste, such as bottles and cans, is separated for recycling. Food waste generated from seated events is separated for composting.

"With SMG's leadership, The Moscone Center will move to a 100-percent biodegradable foo dservice operation by the end of 2007," said John Noguchi, Director of Convention Facilities for the City and COunty of San Francosco.

SMG and the City announced their goal of having two major events this year that would help strive for a zero-waste goal and announce to the world how sustainable practices can impact the convention industry:

•1) AT VM World in September, The Moscone Center diverted about 40,000 box lunch containers from landfill.

"We changed all of our disposable wares to biodegradable products," said Murat Eskicioglu, General Manager of Savor...Catering by SMG.

"We are actually driving this growth sector in the catering industry by working closely with many producers of biodegradable wares to increase their production and make the products available to everyone throughout the industry," Eskicioglu said.

"Moscone's goal is to produce zero-waste catering events, exclusively, by only usingcompostable plates, beverage containers and cutlery, and by doing such a great job n sorting the materials," said Jared Blumenfeld, Director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment.

"This is extremely significant, given the size of convention business as a consumer and the potential for leading sweeping changes throughout the industry," Blumenfeld said.